My buddy David McPherson’s latest book 101 Fascinating Canadian Music Facts recently hit shelves. To mark the occasion, this week he’s letting me share a few of the stories from this deep dive into Canadian music history. Here’s the first one:
The Lucky Luthier
Since founding Manzer Guitars more than four decades ago, Linda Manzer has crafted custom guitars for many artists, including: Stephen Fearing, Bruce Cockburn, Liona Boyd and Paul Simon. One of the coolest instruments she ever created was for acclaimed jazz musician Pat Metheny. Dubbed the Pikasso — this acoustic guitar features 42 strings and three necks. That story has already been told — but in my book I share another story about the guitar that launched the guitar maker’s career:
Flash back to 1976. Canadian guitar maker Manzer was 26 years old and heading to San Francisco with a friend. A pit stop in Marin County, in the Bay Area, proved lucky in unexpected ways.
Carlos Santana’s drummer Graham Lear (an English-born Canadian) and his first wife Sandra (both friends of Manzer) lived in a guest house on the 10-time Grammy winner’s property. Manzer met the legendary guitarist and spent a couple of nights with him before returning to Canada. Two months later, while continuing her tutelage on flat-top guitar construction with master luthier Jean Larrivée in Victoria, B.C., a letter arrived from the Lears, asking her to build a guitar for Santana as a Christmas gift.
Manzer accepted. She researched everything she could find about Santana, discovering he was a follower of the teachings of the Indian guru Sri Chinmoy and had recently changed his name to Devadip. Manzer made an inlay with this spiritual name, along with an Om — the sacred symbol of Hinduism that represents inner peace. Before packaging the guitar and sending it to Graham and Sandra, Manzer played it to open it up. She was living with another couple who also worked for Larrivée and they were playing John Denver’s Christmas record non-stop.
“I put that guitar up to the speakers as we listened,” Manzer recalls. “If ever one can find Denver’s influence in Santana’s work, it would be because that is what the guitar started out listening to!”
Many months later, Manzer was reading a feature interview with Santana in Guitar Player magazine one afternoon and nearly fell out of her chair. The reason, the following sentence: “This friend of mine, Linda Manzer, made me a guitar with a really great tone!”
Those 15 words inked in print were life-changing and launched Manzer’s career. Over the next 45 years, the master luthier (a skilled craftsperson who makes and repairs stringed instruments) has designed guitars for everyone from Canadians Bruce Cockburn and Stephen Fearing to American jazz musician Pat Metheny.
“I was just in the right place at the right time,” she recalls. “People say you are not supposed to say you are lucky — you make your own luck — but I really feel like I’ve been incredibly lucky.”
To read 100 more fascinating Canadian music facts, buy the book HERE. For more about David McPherson, visit his website.
